Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with Margaret Carter, October 25, 1975. Interview A-0309-1. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Full Text of the Excerpt

CHANDLER DAVIDSON:

Who is Hunter McLean?

MARGARET CARTER:

Hunter McLean is a member of one of the oldest families in Ft. Worth.
That picture that I was showing you, from the suffrage scrapbook, of the
lady with the Scotch tartan around her shoulders? That's a picture of
his Aunt Margaret, who was an enthusiastic
Stevenson supporter both times and who lost a good many of her
influential friends because of her outspoken support of Stevenson.
Hunter owned an insurance company, which he had built by writing into
the fine print exceptions which made it most difficult to get his
company to pay out any of the income which he took in.
[Laughter] He was the son of a very useful
and very loyal Democrat, who was also a medical doctor and was an
industrial surgeon whom working people trusted more in our county than
anyone else. Other members of his family had been the first lawyers and
judges in the county. The Scotts and the McLeans had a kind of a
monopoly on the professions in early Ft. Worth.

CHANDLER DAVIDSON:

Well, Hunter McLean was a conservative who usually would not be expected
to work in the Stevenson campaign?

MARGARET CARTER:

No. He was the kind of conservative who would have worked for Lyndon
Johnson out of opportunism. Those three were the conservative but loyal
leaders who helped the rest of us carry the conventions in '56. I was a
delegate to the national convention in '56, because Mr. Buck said that
the person who does the work ought to go to the convention.

CHANDLER DAVIDSON:

Did you get to know John Connally personally in this role?

MARGARET CARTER:

Yes, I got to know John Connally and found out what a double-crossing
so-and-so he was and I have never had the slightest occasion to change
my opinion. We were talking about the labor leader and I told you that I
would tell you a story about that. Well, he was in charge of the office
that labor set up to help with this coalition effort and he couldn't
help but be impressed with the people from the Ft. Worth Club who were
involved with us. Hunter was a gentleman, I'll
give him credit. He was elected to the board of our labor-liberal
organization. He accepted election to the board and he attended meetings
and took part. Now, John never let himself get caught in the same room
with us, but once. There was one point where we threatened to back out
of the whole thing and he did allow himself to sit in the same room with
us for a few minutes while Raymond Buck and Ross Mathews worked out the
situation. [Laughter] But Hunter was a
gentleman, he did work along with us, and this kid, whose name I can't
recall at the moment, I'll think of it, was bowled over at the
opportunity to play golf with Hunter McLean and they pegged him as the
person whom they could persuade to accept their guidance rather than the
guidance of impecunious liberals who had put him in a position to meet
them in the first place. And that poor boy got so mixed up and so torn
between the various loyalties that were fighting for him inside, that by
the time Connally's inauguration was being held,-Connally went after the
governorship, of course, after this '56 campaign,-and he was expecting a
good appointment which we now think that Connally never intended to
make, but he thought that he had a serious offer and he couldn't decide
whether he wanted to do that or stay in the labor movement. He dropped
dead, and he wasn't forty years old, at Connally's inauguration. He was
typical of the kind of labor leaders that we have had since then. The
lure of associating with executives is too much for them, especially as
they get into positions where they have got to maneuver so as to satisfy
conservative people or go back into the plant. Most of them aren't like
Ross. They don't think that they could make a living with the skill they
used to use to make a living. They can't bear the thought of becoming
blue collar workers if they have had a white
collar job. They have no intention of doing as volunteers, anything for
which they have ever managed to draw pay and of course, we don't have
job patronage, or contract patronage, or campaign headquarters financing
to offer. They say, "Well, we provide the money and you liberals get the
credit." Well, of course, they have provided a good deal of money, but
they are mistaken about the liberals getting the credit. They provide
the money but we do the work, because when their members see that they
get the money, their members expect not to be called upon to do work.
The situation is now impossible, in my opinion. It doesn't make any
difference which personality is head of the state AFL-CIO. If he gets to
be head of the state AFL-CIO, he is already committed to do nothing that
will offend the governor, because they think that it is more important
to be able to submit a few names for a few appointive positions to the
governor than it is to keep their membership informed about who is
gutting whom for what.

CHANDLER DAVIDSON:

When do you think this first began to be the dominant view?

MARGARET CARTER:

I'm not sure that it was at the same time in all parts of the country.
I'm sure that it was not the same time in all the labor unions.

CHANDLER DAVIDSON:

Say so far as the Texas AFL-CIO was concerned?

MARGARET CARTER:

I can't say. Until the merger, we worked more with the industrial unions
than with the craft unions.

CHANDLER DAVIDSON:

And that was when, 1956?

MARGARET CARTER:

No, surely it's been farther back than that. There were Jerry Holleman
and Hank Brown and Roy Evans and Harry Hubbard, they've all presidents
since the merger … I'm not sure exactly when it was, But I know back in
the forties and early fifties when we first became
active, the state secretaries of the Industrial Union Council, I believe
they called it, they didn't even call it the state CIO for some time,
and the one of those that we got to know best was Jeff Hickman who was
an oil worker. Jeff had also been a schoolteacher and he was great.

CHANDLER DAVIDSON:

So, you see this gradual change in the labor movement as being really due
to structural features, which are pretty much endemic in the system?

MARGARET CARTER:

I think so. I think that it is a tragedy.

CHANDLER DAVIDSON:

Do you see the labor movement as gradually splitting off from the liberal
movement?

MARGARET CARTER:

Not gradually … well, I guess that it has happened gradually, but it has
happened. The unions have been co-opted.